Media coverage of climate change
[12] In 2007, the BBC announced the cancellation of a planned television special Planet Relief, which would have highlighted the global warming issue and included a mass electrical switch-off.
"[15] A peak in media coverage occurred in early 2007, driven by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
"[19] Media coverage of climate change during the Trump Administration remained prominent as most news outlets placed heavy emphasis on Trump-related stories rather than climate-related events.
[29] According to Shoemaker and Reese, controversy is one of the main variables affecting story choice among news editors, along with human interest, prominence, timeliness, celebrity, and proximity.
[30] W.L Bennet defines this trait as: "the tendency to downplay the big social, economic, or political picture in favor of human trials, tragedies and triumphs".
But recently scientists and scholars have challenged the legitimacy of this journalistic core value with regard to matters of great importance on which the overwhelming majority of the scientific community has reached a well-substantiated consensus view.
[22] Given real consensus among climatologists over global warming, many scientists find the media's desire to portray the topic as a scientific controversy to be a gross distortion.
[citation needed] In a report produced for the Institute for Public Policy Research Gill Ereaut and Nat Segnit suggested that alarmist language is frequently used in relation to environmental matters by newspapers, popular magazines and in campaign literature put out by the government and environment groups.
For example, an article in The Hindu by Kapista and Bashkirtsev wrote: "Who remembers today, they query, that in the 1970s, when global temperatures began to dip, many warned that we faced a new ice age?
Media coverage in the United States during the Bush Administration often emphasized and exaggerated scientific uncertainty over climate change, reflecting the interests of the political elite.
[52] Hall et al. suggest that government and corporate officials enjoy privileged access to the media, allowing their line to become the 'primary definer' of an issue.
[56] However, media also has the capacity to challenge political norms and expose corrupt behaviour,[57] as demonstrated in 2007 when The Guardian revealed that American Enterprise Institute received $10,000 from petrochemical giant Exxon Mobil to publish articles undermining the IPCC's 4th assessment report.
[failed verification] Commentators have argued that the climate change discourses constructed in the media have not been conducive to generating the political will for swift action.
[61] Furthermore, media coverage of climate change (particularly in tabloid journalism but also more generally), is concentrated around extreme weather events and projections of catastrophe, creating "a language of imminent terror"[62] which some commentators argue has instilled policy-paralysis and inhibited response.
Anderson found that there is evidence that social media can raise awareness of climate change issues, but warns that it can also lead to opinion-dominated ideologies and reinforcement.
The article discusses the potential impact of youth to raise awareness while also inspiring action, and using social media platforms to share the message.
[81] During the Harper government (2006-2015), Canadian media, mostly notably the CBC, made little effort to balance the claims of global warming deniers with voices from science.
[82] Within various provincial and language media outlets, there are varying levels of articulation regarding scientific consensus and the focus on ecological dimensions of climate change.
In a six year span, between 2001 and 2007, the UK had over a hundred articles per newspaper covering the topic of flooding, showing a clear concern with extreme weather events.
The commuters of London, reaching to the amount of a million participants, on the date of October 25, 2007, t provided a free metro newspaper which contained an important article with the headline "We're in the biggest race of our lives."
This stance is reflected in one of their articles:[97][98] "When this global warming madness passes, future generations will remove this derelict solar and wind infrastructure and return to the only reliable and economical electricity options—coal, gas, hydro and nuclear."
[102][103] A number of studies have shown that particularly in the United States and in the UK tabloid press, the media significantly understated the strength of scientific consensus on climate change established in IPCC Assessment Reports in 1995 and in 2001.
The first picture emerges from reading all 100 greenhouse-related articles published over a five-month period (May–September 1997) in The Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.
In their study they found that — due to this practice of journalistic objectivity — "Over a 15-year period, a majority (52.7%) of prestige-press articles featured balanced accounts that gave 'roughly equal attention' to the views that humans were contributing to global warming and that exclusively natural fluctuations could explain the earth's temperature increase [...] US mass-media have misrepresented the top climate scientific perspective regarding anthropogenic climate change."
[64] A study of US newspapers and television news from 1995 to 2006 examined "how and why US media have represented conflict and contentions, despite an emergent consensus view regarding anthropogenic climate science."
The study noted the influence of Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear, which "empowered movements across scale, from individual perceptions to the perspectives of US federal powerbrokers regarding human contribution to climate change.
Such segments often featured "experts" who are not climate scientists at all or are personally connected to vested interests, such as the energy industry and its network of lobbyists and think tanks, for example, the Heartland Institute, funded by the Exxon Mobil company and the Koch foundation.
The close association of images of Arctic glaciers, ice, and fauna with climate change might harbor cultural connotations that contradict the fragility of the region.
[109] Gallup's annual update on Americans' attitudes toward the environment shows a public that over the last two years (2008-2010) has become less worried about the threat of global warming, less convinced that its effects are already happening, and more likely to believe that scientist themselves are uncertain about its occurrence.
This increase can be attributed to coverage of the United Nations Conference of Parties meeting which aimed to outline policies to address climate change.
